and even
then, as was stated in the last chapter, they did not believe it. It
is not probable that it was known in Media and Persia; so that, after
Prexaspes accomplished his work, and returned to Cambyses with the
report of it, it was probably generally supposed that his brother was
still alive, and was residing somewhere in one or another of the royal
palaces.

Such royal personages were often accustomed to live thus, in a state
of great seclusion, spending their time in effeminate pleasures within
the walls of their palaces, parks, and gardens. When the royal
Smerdis, therefore, secretly and suddenly disappeared, it would be
very easy for the magian Smerdis, with the collusion of a moderate
number of courtiers and attendants, to take his place, especially if
he continued to live in retirement, and exhibited himself as little as
possible to public view. Thus it was that Cambyses himself, by the
very crimes which he committed to shield himself from all danger of a
revolt, opened the way which specially invited it, and almost insured
its success. Every particular step that he took, too, helped to
promote the end. His sending Smerdis home; his waiting an interval,
and then sending Prexaspes to destroy him; his ordering his
assassination to be secret--these, and all the other attendant
circumstances, were only so many preliminary steps, preparing the way
for the success of the revolution which was to accomplish his ruin. He
was, in a word, his own destroyer. Like other wicked men, he found, in
the end, that the schemes of wickedness which he had malignantly aimed
at the destruction of others, had been all the time slowly and surely
working out his own.

The people of Persia, therefore, were prepared by Cambyses's own acts
to believe that the usurper Smerdis was really Cyrus's son, and, next
to Cambyses, the heir to the throne. The army of Cambyses, too, in
Egypt, believed the same. It was natural that they should do so for
they placed no confidence whatever in Cambyses's dying declarations;
and since intelligence, which seemed to be official, came from Susa
declaring that Smerdis was still alive, and that he had actually taken
possession of the throne, there was no apparent reason for doubting
the fact. Besides, Prexaspes, as soon as Cambyses was dead, considered
it safer for him to deny than to confess having murdered the prince.
He therefore declared that Cambyses's story was false, and that he had
no doubt that Smer